Using NCTM's Professional Learning Toolkit

Over the last 6 years working as a mathematics teacher educator, I've taken some time collecting valuable resources to be better at my practice. One particular effort through the Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership, allowed Jamalee Stone and myself to expand this work through a multi-institutional survey (Conway & Stone, 2019). In the survey, we looked for resources that educators used to support pre-service teachers in developing NCTM’s Teaching Practices (2014). Our survey and work uncovered a valuable resource that teacher educators recommended across institutions to develop NCTM’s teaching practices: Principles to Actions Professional Learning Toolkit (PLT).

The PLT provides multiple videos, lessons, tasks, presentations, student artifacts, etc. to help teacher educators develop a deeper understanding of teaching. There are also numerous parts of the PLT that are free for non-NCTM members. The resources in the PLT cross elementary, middle, and high school providing teacher educators an excellent resource at all levels of pre-service teacher development.

In my own practice as a teacher educator, I have used these videos as common places to reflect on teaching and learning as a class. As we spend time in methods courses developing a deeper understanding of the teaching practices, I have used tasks in the PLT to look more closely at what appropriate tasks look like while focusing on individual practices. During class, students and I use the clinical experiences observation (MCOP2) rubric developed by Gleason, Livers, and Zelkowski (2017) to learn more about their expectations during clinical experiences that align with NCTM’s teaching practices and the mathematical practice standards. As times required more space virtually over the last year, these resources were useful in focusing pre-service teachers and graduate students’ attention toward high leverage research based practices in mathematics education that support student learning.

Conway, B. & Stone, J. (2019, June). Sharing and Building Resources to Equip and Empower Mathematics Teacher Educators. Proceedings at the Mathematics Teacher Education Partnership Annual Conference; St. Louis, MO.

Gleason, J., Livers, S., & Zelkowski, J. (2017). Mathematics Classroom Observation Protocol for Practices (MCOP^2): A validation study. Investigations in Mathematics Learning, ​9.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2014). Principles to actions: Ensuring mathematical success for all. Reston, VA: Author.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2015). Principles to Actions Professional Learning Toolkit. Retrieved from https://www.nctm.org/PtAToolkit/.